Suicide rate reached record high in 2022 but dropped among young people

By Bernard Turk On Nov 30, 2023

Suicides among young Americans, whose mental health problems during the coronavirus pandemic reached crisis proportions, declined sharply in 2022, while rates for older groups — especially men — rose, according to data released by the government Wednesday.

The increase in suicides among people older than 35 was responsible for an overall 1 percent rise in the suicide rate to a record high of 14.3 per 100,000 people since 2021, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics. The total number of suicides last year — 49,449 — rose by 3 percent and is expected to increase further when final data is available.

Men, who comprise the vast majority of suicides each year, saw a 2 percent jump in their total, to 39,255, resuming a long trend of increases after two years of small declines. Suicides among women rose 4 percent, to 10,194, but the rate remained roughly the same as it has been for decades.

People older than 75 posted the highest suicide rates since at least 1999.

Men 75 years and older continued to take their own lives at by far the highest rate, at 43.7 per 100,000. The suicide rate for men overall in 2022 was the highest ever, according to government data published online that goes back to the 1960s.

Women had the highest rates of suicide in middle age, peaking from 35 to 64 years old, though the rate for that group has declined since 2015. Younger women, from age 15 to 34, and women older than 75 saw suicide rates higher than at any time since at least 1999. The suicide rate for women overall in 2022 was well below its peak in the early 1970s.

In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which houses the NCHS, released a report showing that nearly a quarter of U.S. high-schoolers had seriously considered suicide in 2021, part of an alarming wave of hopelessness and other mental health problems that accompanied the coronavirus pandemic.

The new suicide data provides a glimmer of improvement. Suicide rates in 2022 dropped 18 percent among 10- to 14-year-olds and 9 percent among 15- to 24-year-olds. Among 25- to 34-year-olds, the rate declined for men and increased for women.

“This is a hopeful sign, and a reminder that we must continue to implement interventions that we know can help people,” Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said in an email.

Native Americans continue to suffer the highest rates of suicide. White people are twice as likely to die by suicide as Black or Hispanic people. Asian people have the lowest rates of suicide.

If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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